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Another murder?
“See if Transformers is on,” Frankie interrupted.
Donja tossed him the remote. “Look for yourself, but there’s not enough time for a movie and you need to take Maestro out.”
Donja snatched her android from the nightstand and dropped her head to the screen, her locks falling softly upon her face. She tucked them behind her ears. Her fingers flew across the screen as she texted Debbie. She waited, rubbed her eyes and watched as Frankie and Maestro, who was mimicking a jumping bean, headed for the door. She glanced back to the phone waiting for a response, waiting—waiting. It never came. “Grrrr.” She got up with a cursory glance at the bedside clock. 7:37 a.m. “Forget it. Her and Gina were out with Drenda last night, she won’t even be awake till noon,” she mumbled as she got dressed.
~~~
After breakfast and a half-mile trek into the woods behind the restaurant chasing Maestro in hot pursuit of a possum, they loaded up. Carson steered the Suburban, which had a new fan belt, onto I-75 directly for Sault Ste. Marie. Donja settled into the comfy leather seat and checked her phone.
Nothing.
Great friend you are, Debbie. Am I that easy to forget?
She plugged in her earphones, peering out the tinted windows as they sped down a ribbon of asphalt through a forest so thick and ancient that she shuddered. She closed her eyes, and within no time the enchanting voice of ‘Tilo Wolff,’ lead singer of Lacrimosa, had her swooning. Suddenly it occurred to her that the trip was almost over.
Damn, I’ll be rooming with Makayla tonight.
She gripped her stomach as waves of nausea forced a wretched moan.
“You okay?” Lisa called out from the front seat.
“Yeah,” she answered, hoping her mom bought it. She cowered in the seat listening to her mom, laughing and talking with Carson.
Why did we have to be the ones to move? Why not him and his precious little princess. Grrr!
She fought her tears and then, out of the wild blue, it occurred to her that Grandma Anna had an extra bedroom. She heaved a raspy breath.
I’ll call her as soon as we get to the new house. She’ll come get me.
“Grandma,” she whispered, flooded by memories.
Anna Nolan was born to poor Chippewa parents and raised somewhere in Ontario. That fact was a given, but everything else about her life was a mystery, taboo, not something anyone talked about, at least not openly. What little she had heard, Donja learned at a young age by eavesdropping on her parents and even that was a bit foggy. What really stuck in her mind was that Anna and her grandfather, Ardrey Bellanger, got married at a young age, ran away from their Chippewa families, and never returned.
She recalled her father telling her mother that growing up, he was forbidden to talk about Chippewas or Canada and was taught from a young age to lie and say his family originated from Oklahoma. That puzzled Donja and it must have bothered her father as well, for she remembered a Sunday dinner when her grandma and her dad got into a heated argument, first over Chippewas and then over a proposed trip her father was planning to Canada. Aunt Leigh, her father’s younger sister was present that day and thinking back, that was the one and only time she ever attended a family gathering. When the argument escalated, Leigh picked up her plate of food and threw it at Anna. She stormed out of the dining room but not before screaming at both her parents. “You need to stop living a lie and tell your precious son the truth about his heritage,” whatever that meant. The argument turned violent and Donja watched as her grandfather ran after Leigh. They struggled as Donja’s mom dragged her to the safety of the kitchen, but Leigh’s parting words were still burned in her mind. “Just because he’s a fucking man doesn’t mean he gets a pardon. He has a daughter and someday she’ll face the same hell I’ve lived with my entire life!”
They finished out the meal after Leigh’s dramatic departure and when Donja’s dad, in a near whisper, asked what Leigh was talking about, Grandpa Bellanger said it was the booze talking and it might have been, after all Leigh was an alcoholic. Everyone knew it, and though Donja didn’t quite understand at the time, she recalled hearing that Leigh lived man to man, bar to tavern, walking the streets of Benton Harbor.
Shortly after the incident with Aunt Leigh, Donja was helping her dad grill burgers in the backyard of their home while her mother sunbathed on a quilt. She heard her Dad tell her mom that Grandpa Bellanger had bailed Leigh out of jail and brought her home to get her off the streets. The next morning, Leigh had robbed them blind; jewelry, money, guns, the TV, anything she could hock. Four days later, while watching ‘The Price is Right,’ Donja heard the phone and then her dad’s painful moans. Ardrey Bellanger was found in the garage, dead after a massive heart attack. Donja recalled the pain and thinking back, that was about the time when her life first began to unravel. Grandma Anna was shattered, but the worst was yet to come. Six weeks to the day after Ardrey died, Donja’s father, caught in a wrong place, wrong time scenario, fell prey to a terrorist car bombing.
Donja remembered her grandma’s tears and though her mom tried to console her, she was just as lost, pacing the floors, night and day, crying. Eventually Anna recovered, as much as humanly possible, and for the next six years lived only for Donja and Frankie. Now, with her son and husband dead and a daughter ostracized by lies, thievery, prostitution, and alcoholism, the last two constants of her troubled life, her grandkids, were ripped away, thanks to Carson Hampton.
“Wow!” Frankie mused, his face pressed to the tinted windows.
Drawn from a tempest of emotions, Donja glanced out the window and saw a great body of water which she assumed was Lake Superior. Begot by the enchanting sight she unbuckled her seat belt and slid over, spooning Frankie’s body. She felt herself soften, taking in the rolling hills as the Suburban sped past towering trees with sporadic meadows of verdant green. Traversing a winding passage, the St. Mary’s river was suddenly revealed. Silence found them, all eyes on the majestic forest bordering the rocky coastline, and as they rounded a sharp curve, a picturesque lighthouse atop a rocked dome stood like an ethereal guardian of the sparkling depths.
“It’s beautiful,” Donja breathed, surprised by her own words.
“That’s why I couldn’t leave it,” Carson said. “Though I would have if your mother had insisted, but thankfully,” he mused with a loving glance to Lisa, “she fell in love with it too.” Donja watched as her mom leaned over and kissed his waiting cheek. “I do love it here,” she said. “Almost as much as you.”
Donja turned back to gaze upon a tug boat, a barge and several smaller vessels navigating the river.
“Donja, do you feel the power of the land?” her mom asked.
“What do mean?” Donja asked without looking.
“Just that you have Chippewa blood and this is the home of your ancestors.”
